


Shadow in the Waking World

by charlottechill



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25354186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: If Nicky weren’t suffering when the laughter came, he would not have sighed and dropped his gaze. They were beyond such taunts. But Nicky was suffering, and the laughing men were ghosts already, and Joe was done humoring them.* * *Or, why a bunch of dead bodies just spilled out of an armored truck, and what happened before they did.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 31
Kudos: 648





	Shadow in the Waking World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [megankent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/megankent/gifts).



The first thing Joe saw when he opened his watery eyes was Nicky’s body, rocking with the motion of the truck.

Nicky was silent. The truck was loud, the mercenaries who’d captured them, quiet. Joe coughed again, gagging, forcing the foul acid and dead tissue out of himself and into the air.

He reached out as he inhaled his first clear breath, almost touched before he was pulled away, and exhaled, “Nicolo?”

“Quiet.”

He reached again. “Nicolo, destati. Destati!”

“I said—”

He frowned annoyance at the leader. “I know what you said. What are you gonna do, kill me?” Theirs was the petty dominance of small men, and Nicky was too still.

Then he saw it: the scrunching of eyes, the furrow that spoke of pain. Nicky’s breaths were shallow, resisting the violent spasms that had cleared that shit from Joe’s lungs. He was coming back.

“Nicolo, destati. Destati.”

"Sono qui,” Nicky said, and breathed again, and Joe exhaled hope. "Sono qui.” Nicky gained his balance. “Ovunque qui sia.” _Wherever this is._

Joe’s first scan of this box had been to find Nicky. He looked now, a quick inspection before his gaze fell back like gravity. Without battle to distract him, the moments between Nicky’s death and life were a time of suffering: penance for his undeserved riches. “In un blindato. Hanno usato del gas."

The mercenary leader kicked him again. “I told you to shut up.”

It was business, for these men. They too might have families, people they cherished for the momentary blink of their lives. He tried to reassure them. “I need to know he’s okay.”

“What is he, your boyfriend?” the leader said, and glanced around the hold, inviting his men to judge them.

If Nicky weren’t suffering when the laughter came, he would not have sighed and dropped his gaze. They were beyond such taunts. But Nicky was suffering, and the laughing men were ghosts already, and Joe was done humoring them.

“You’re a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. He’s not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream. He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me even after a millennium. His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason, he’s not my boyfriend.”

A stuttered breath carried the emotion he affirmed and he looked back to Nicky, who was no longer suffering. Nicky, whose eyes were wide, watching only him.

Joe had been blessed by that look so many times. He witnessed for Nicky, under the stares of these small men and in full view of the god they had both worshipped, a god whose prophets and corrupt leaders had steered them to such hatred. He witnessed _to_ Nicky, lest the man forget when Joe lost his temper or his will to forgive: Joe knew, had known for centuries, that his submission to the Prophet, peace be upon him, had waned in the heat and power of his commitment to one man. “He is all and he is more.”

Nicky almost smiled. “You incurable romantic,” he said instead, and Joe readied himself for the thrill.

He breathed through his nose to smell the man under the sour taste of the gas on his tongue and the bitter tang of propellant that permeated them after centuries of war.

He might’ve stayed there an hour, lips pressed to lips, caressing the smooth cheek, feeling the fine hair that was growing too long. When rough hands pulled Nicky away and he rolled to the floor, Joe savored the taste for a moment.

Then he acted, and Nicky beside him did the same.

Before Joe’s first broken bone healed he heard the gurgle behind him and finished the man in the corner with ruthless precision. Three down. He kicked out and wrapped the chain that bound his ankles around the throat of his next target, called Nicky’s name, heard “Qui, sta 'zitto,” and smiled grimly.

It was over in less time than the kiss. In far less time than it had taken for Nicky to become alive again. Joe turned on his knee to finish what Nicky had started, mouth to mouth, fingers still wet with blood.

Nicky sucked in air, laughed against his tongue, pulled away. “Eager.”

“Yes.”

Nicky’s eyes made magic again, loved him again, forgave him for all he had been and all he would be, and a dry thumb stuttered across his damp lips. “There must be a way out of here.”

They rifled the bodies, examined the lock on the door, and gave up when Joe heard the drivers on the radio, reporting in. “Come here,” he said, and settled on the bench.

Nicky crawled to him and knelt between his knees. They held each other’s hands and breathed each other’s air. He pressed Nicky’s palm toward his pants but Nicky refused him, muscles tensing.

“No. Wait.”

Joe scowled at the bodies, at the locked door. “For what?”

Nicky grinned. “For a soft bed, good wine, something better than spit and blood. All the things you deserve.”

Joe frowned. He didn’t fear death. He did fear being left behind or worse, trapped alive without Nicky. Ever since Quynh, he knew it could happen. It was why he held so tightly when they slept, why he didn’t venture far between battles, why they were so often the other's shadow in their waking world—so they might never sleep apart and dream of the other in torment.

He leaned back, pressed his shoulders against cold metal. “And you call me the romantic.” He glanced around the box that held them, and shrugged. “We’ve done it in worse places.”

“Yes, Joe.” Nicky curled away and sat down on the floor of their cage, and Joe surrendered. They’d done it in far worse places. But they wouldn’t be doing it here.

Nicky settled more comfortably and propped an elbow on Joe’s knee. “It’s bad about Copley, really. I liked him.”

Joe grimaced. Always, Nicky looked for good in people when he wasn’t killing them. Sometimes even then. “He’s a perfectionist. I can respect that, at least. Move. One of these assholes has to have a K-bar. I’m losing feeling in my fingers.”

But no one did, not even a pen knife, and before Joe decided to saw the bands off against some corpse’s teeth, the van had moved from dirt to smooth surface and slowed.

He thought of the shoes piled outside the door of the first trap Copley had set for them. Their escape didn’t lie beyond the locked door of this armored car.  
  
#  
  
Later, strapped to a table in a lab, after he’d died hearing Nicky whimper and awakened to Nicky’s smile, he wondered if this would be the time, their eternal cage.

Nicky stared at the ceiling. “Do you know, I was thinking about Malta.”

Joe searched his mind for a fight like this one, a past escape that would do them any good here. “What time in Malta?”

Nicky turned his head, his lips soft and his eyes wide.

Joe’s body remembered almost before his brain did, and he smiled. “Ah, that time in Malta.” So much desire, so much delay, so much waiting before they’d made each other drunk with pleasure.

“Dovremmo tornarci.”

Joe didn’t look around the cage. He didn’t think about what they hadn’t done in the van. What, after hundreds of years, Nicky had stopped doing: no frenzied “in case it’s the last” fucks for them. They could be frenzied, but they did not waste their love on fear. “Sarebbe bello.”

Nicky looked back and Joe didn’t care where they were. When Nicky looked at him like that, Joe never did. 

_The end_

**Author's Note:**

> Translations  
> Qui, sta 'zitto = here, shut up.  
> Dovremmo tornarci = We should go back.
> 
> Untranslated foreign language is taken from the (filmed) source material. 
> 
> My thanks to Megan, who has appointed herself research assistant for All Things Requiring Her to Look At Any Part of This Movie Again. And for proofing this story and squeeing with me for the past 3 days about Charlize Theron and, really, every hero in this movie. Without exception. 
> 
> Comments welcome. Pointing out of errors so I can fix them, loved like Joe loves Nicky. Critique totally great. 
> 
> Also, I may tweak this if, when I get the rest of the comics, I see canon divergence I want to correct. Or if some kind soul points out a big gaping plot point I missed that will make the story better.


End file.
